


Like the wing to the bird, the air to the wing

by gloss



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Blow Jobs, Finntrospection, M/M, Macondo, Marooned, OTP shenanigans, cuisine, porgs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-06
Updated: 2017-12-06
Packaged: 2019-02-11 11:55:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12934749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gloss/pseuds/gloss
Summary: Poe and Finn make and enjoy porg soup.(Ripped fromTLJ press tourandsocial media!)





	Like the wing to the bird, the air to the wing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [orchis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/orchis/gifts).



> an early birthday present for @orchis.
> 
> Earth [jocón](http://www.supermercadoslatorre.com/receta-jocon-guatemalteco/) is wonderful stuff, veg*nized or not.

> Como el hueso al cuerpo humano, y el eje a una rueda, y el ala a un pájaro, y el aire al ala, así es la libertad la esencia de la vida. Cuanto sin ella se hace es imperfecto.
> 
> Like bones to the human body, the axle to the wheel, the wing to the bird, and the air to the wing, so is liberty the essence of life. Whatever is done without it is imperfect.  
>  José Martí, "Libertad, ala de la industria". La América. New York, September, 1883.

On the run from a First Order scouting expedition, they crashed in the high-altitude desert. Nothing is in sight for hundreds of klicks but rippling salt flats and the shimmering, elusive hint of clouds to the south.

Once again, they've escaped by the skin of their teeth. 

"At least," Poe points out, "we didn't get separated this time. This time, it's more like vacation!"

That's one way of looking at being marooned, out of communication, in total isolation on an unnamed moon in an undercharted sector.

The crash site is a black wound in the bone-white landscape; the smoke coils upward, straight up, as they trek away. BB-8 drags most of what they could salvage on a sledge made of fuselage, while Finn and Poe shoulder the rest.

They need to wait the requisite three cycles before contacting base, in order to make sure the FO scout is gone and hasn't contacted anyone else. The first two cycles pass in a blur of hiking, salt crusting their faces and jamming the droid.

The third day, they descend out of the desert into slightly more hospitable territory: forested old mountains worn to soft nubs running down to the sea. There is fresh water in the woods, and cute fungi shaped like BB-8's crown here. But they also hear the triple-ping of a First Order surveillance drone, just as dusk falls. It sends them scurrying for cover and resets their waiting period.

On the morning of the fifth cycle, they find what look like miltomas growing wild and hear the shriek of sea birds. BB-8 runs extensive tests and informs them that the fruit is safe to eat. It is, indeed, very closely related to the sort that Poe grew up gorging on. The birds, he adds, are rusty-mawed porgs, and not to be trusted.

"What does trust have to do with it?" Finn asks. BB-8 mumbles resentfully, but that's as close to an answer as Finn will get. Poe is too busy whooping and harvesting as many miltomas as he can reach.

"I'm telling you, these are the greatest! These go in _everything_! Everyone says, oh, kids hate vegetables!"

"I never heard that," Finn says.

"Trust me, it's a thing, very widespread, standard comedian fare, but not with these!" Poe takes a huge bite from the miltoma in his hand and chews with open mouth. "I could be vegan if these were around. And had protein. You know what I mean."

"But they're fruit."

"Fruit, vegetable, it's all the same," Poe says and kicks BB-8 lightly when he starts to disagree. "Trust me, one bite, you'll never look back."

After so long spitting salt and sharing expired ration bars, the fruit has nearly a psychedelic effect on Finn. He takes another bite, staggers a little, and his mouth wells with spit.

"Right?" Poe asks, grinning, his mouth smeared with green juice.

"Delicious."

"Buddy, you don't know the meaning of--" Poe stops and shakes his head. "No, you do know, because you're tasting it right now. Fuck, I need to sleep. And eat. And bathe."

"You and me both," Finn replies, helping himself to another miltoma. The flavor isn't sweet, as he'd been expecting, but savory, and complex, like honey toasted with smoky nuts.

They set up camp about an hour farther out, at the start of the beach where the mountains grind to a stop. The sound of the birds is louder here, relentless, but the air is fresher and they're protected from the wind by the cliffs.

"We can make jocón," Poe shouts when the lean-to is ready, the fire is catching, and they can finally sit down. "Finn! Jocón!"

Finn looks up from folding their spare blanket. "Which is...?"

"Only my favorite food ever in the long and twisting, fairly sordid history of me," Poe says and puts on an elaborate scowl. "I'd think you'd know that."

"Every food you taste is your favorite," Finn says. "It's hard to keep up."

"This is really my favorite, though. This is Macondian, my mom taught my dad and tío Cassian how to make it, it's pretty much the only thing she cooked, other than fritters, but anyone can make those."

"The stew," Finn says slowly as he remembers. "With miltomas and junglefowl."

Poe smiles at him, blinks, keeps smiling. He rubs his chin, the back of his neck, then reaches over and slaps Finn's upper arm. And smiles.

"I got it right?" Finn asks. That smile could be indulgent, after all. It could mean, _aw, look at Finn, he tries so hard_ , affection softened with pity, or it could mean--

"You always get it right, you're fucking amazing," Poe says. " _Yes_ , that's jocón. One question first, though. Beeb!"

BB-8 takes his time waking up, lights flickering a little before catching. Finally, he lets out a low-pitched gurgle.

"Porgs are edible, right?"

BB-8 hoots back a reply and Poe laughs.

"Sounded like 'better than they deserve'," Finn says.

"Yeah, he hates 'em, I guess there's history there?" Poe replies and shrugs it off. "He's got his secrets. Anyway! Tomorrow, we'll lay a trapline and this time tomorrow night, we will be dining like kings! Except not royalty, fuck that whole entire concept, we'll be dining like citizen representatives duly elected to bear the voice of the people!"

*

When it comes time, however, Poe suddenly gets queasy about the whole prospect.

"Kind of funny when you think about it, how shooting the enemy's just fine--" He gulps and looks away, adding, " _usually_ fine, not always, of course."

Finn is washing the miltomas. He doesn't need to remind Poe that shooting Slip was understandable, perfectly forgivable. They were slaughtering that village, what else was Poe supposed to do? 

Maybe it's weird that Finn grasps that fact so easily while Poe continues to chew over the ethics and implications.

"But?" Finn asks when Poe's been quiet for a while.

"But when you have to kill something to eat it, it feels different."

"It is different."

"Yeah, but how?" Poe grasps his knees and leans in, expression open, almost pleading. "Why?"

Finn tosses an underripe miltoma at Poe. "I don't know, it just is."

Poe lobs it back, hitting Finn's shoulder, and stands up. He looks over at the trapline, then back to the camp.

"You know I don't want to do this. I mean, I don't _relish_ doing this," Poe says. He shifts from foot to foot. "For the record."

"Noted," Finn replies. He smiles, however, as well. Poe's been complaining about the noise and defecation and sheer tooth-grinding annoyingness of the flock for hours now. "I can take care of it, if you want."

Poe's jaw tightens. "Which one of us grew up on a farm? I can do this."

Standing, Finn edges him aside; it's a deft move, a little nudge of the shoulder and shuffle of the feet. "Which one of us grew up under fascist indoctrination? I, too, can do this."

BB-8 trills sharply.

"No, Beeb, your gripper isn't dexterous enough for..." Poe shudders slightly before regaining his composure. "Beheading and plucking. I'll do it."

"For crying out loud, sit! I'll do the bird stuff, you do the rest," Finn tells him. He pushes Poe's shoulder down, firmly and inexorably, until Poe finally accedes to it and sinks back into a crouch.

"You sure?" 

"Surer than sure," Finn says. "Survival training, remember?"

Poe squints up at him. Being marooned here hasn't done him any ill; his hair's softer and curling up at the ends, a little longer than even the Resistance's notoriously lax regulations would tolerate. His beard has come in nearly two-thirds silver, so his expression's always slightly more radiant than you - even if you're Finn - would expect.

"Survival training come in real handy on the sanitation beat?" 

"Har har," Finn says and tugs on the trapline. It's heavy, indeed, just as BB-8 had said, but Finn had been discounting the reports of hunting success. He'd assumed BB's surprisingly visceral animosity might be inflating his tally.

Three porgs are lifeless in the wee nooses studding the trapline, along with the feathers of a fourth who seems to have escaped. Finn makes short work of the decapitation and blooding; it's the plucking that takes him longer than he'd thought. Porgs sport three-layer down and pinfeathers. Nude, they are reduced nearly half in size. He cuts them apart at the joints, empties the guts, and tries his best to ignore the other birds shrieking overhead at the bounty. The slightest breeze kicks up all the feathers so they're swirling around Finn like a Starkiller storm as he makes his way back to camp. 

Poe looks up from the flat rock on which he's grinding seeds as BB toasts the rest. "Greetings from Hoth, man."

Finn bats away the last of the feathers and drops the sling of butchered birds at his feet. "I'm going to wash up, then what should I do?"

"Fire's all set," Poe says, musing, as he piles up the sticky paste that the seeds have become. "I guess, sear the meat, then dump in the broth?"

"You guess?" Finn rinses off his hands a third time, just to be sure, and wrings out his jersey. It's a little too cold here, even in the lee of sea cliffs, to be shirtless, but he'd rather be chilly than blood-drenched. Call him fussy. "Oh, Finn, we can make jocón! I know just the thing! You're gonna love it! No problem, I know the recipe by heart!"

"I do," Poe protests, scowling a little at Finn's entirely inaccurate rendition of his voice and cadence. "Knowing something by heart, it's not about... _detail_."

"That's exactly what 'by heart' means."

"Maybe for you," Poe says, "but for me, see, I think it's more about the _feel_ of the thing..."

"I got your _feel_ right here," Finn says, all husky voice and hooded gaze, and that, _that_ , gets a nice little gasp from Cooler than Cool Dameron.

Poe launches himself forward, away from the fire, aiming for Finn's legs. He's obstructed by a pile of their gear and grunts a little as he rolls off.

"I was totally going to tackle you," he calls from the high grasses.

"I got that, yeah," Finn says as he comes over. Standing over Poe, he is haloed in green-gold sun. "Want a hand up?"

"How about a hand job?"

"Weak," Finn says, but drops down to sit beside Poe nonetheless. "Meat's searing and Beeb's peeling and chopping the fruit."

"It's a vegetable."

"It's a fruit that is treated in several different cuisines like a vegetable," Finn says in that firm tone that brooks no disagreement. That is, unless you have the spine of Leia or the mulish glee of Poe. "Botanically, however, it is, and remains, very much a fruit."

"It tastes like a vegetable," Poe says. "I've been eating it since I was kneehigh to a stick-jumper, and I'm telling you--"

"Poe?"

"Yeah?"

"About that handjob."

Poe sits up so fast that Finn feels a rush of air, but before he can say anything, Poe's kissing him. No warm up, no tasting little pecks and exploratory affection, just Poe wrapping an arm around his neck and _sucking_ open his mouth and clambering half into Finn's lap, half astride it.

They have both been bathing in a briny marsh. Finn's shirtless and shivering; his own beard, far more scraggly than Poe's but - according to Poe and seconded by BB-8 - "just as cute, in a different way", is itching and curling, catching on Poe's cheek. They're grubby, that's the thing, and a little wacked-out from hiking hundreds of kilometers and sleeping too little, and hoarse from drinking chemically desalinated water.

But none of that matters, because the jocón is starting to smell amazing, both earthy and sweet, and Poe is murmuring urgently as he slides his free hand up and down Finn's chest. He twists up nipples that were already hard from the cold into something sharper and tenser and far better.

"In a hurry?" Finn asks when Poe breaks to take a breath.

"Beeb, add the miltomas and the broth, would you?" Poe calls without loosening his hold on Finn. "Me? In a hurry? What makes you say that?"

"Just a question," Finn replies, pressing his mouth to the bottom of Poe's throat, just below the hairline, where his pulse jumps and shudders. He holds Poe's hips, holds him in place, kissing him harder, biting now, until Poe trembles a couple times and bangs his fist weakly on Finn's back.

"C'mon, man!"

"C'mon what?"

"Torture!"

"This isn't torture," Finn says slowly, maneuvering and shifting until his legs are better spread and he's got a workable angle on Poe's fly. "I think we both know that."

" _Torture_ ," Poe insists. He rakes his nails down Finn's side. "Fuck."

The Order believes that life is merely and totally conflict, only a struggle, drenched in blood and tears, organized by pain and obedience and, in the end, death. As sick as all that is, there's a simplicity, too, that Finn can see now. Not appreciate, nothing like that, but discern. 

When he was in the middle of that life, there was nothing _to_ discern, nowhere to step back to and survey from. This view was everything.

Now, however, he sees that view for what it is: simplistic, facile, terribly flimsy. What he has instead is confusing and contradictory. He couldn't kill for the Order but feels little to no remorse doing it for the Resistance. He can sense that things are different, but he's still working out just how they differ, let alone why, let alone if this is permanent or not.

They can joke here about torture, wrestle each other and grind hard, make the word "torture" into an exaggeration of impatience and need. At the same time, torture retains its original meaning, agony and interrogation, violation of the most fundamental kind.

Things have so many meanings, simultaneously, running up against each other. The challenge is to hold them all, but choose what means what in the appropriate context. Liberty, Finn supposes, is just this, admitting multiplicity without letting the serious, material, actual get swamped by the playful and metaphorical.

"Hey," Poe says, right in Finn's ear, "you okay?"

"Excellent," Finn tells him, falling back and pulling Poe with him until he's on his back and Poe's kneeling over him, crooked smile and crinkled-up eyes. Finn cups Poe's crotch and answers his smile with one of his own. "Hand, right? Or can I make you a better offer?"

"Better than your hand?" Poe rocks into Finn's touch. "I don't know, is that even possible?"

Finn smacks his lips a couple times, then tugs open Poe's fly.

"Oh, right, much better," Poe answers himself. He wiggles forward, knees digging into Finn's armpits, then pauses, shivering, when Finn gets his dick out. "So much better."

"Thought so," Finn murmurs, running his fingers up the shaft. Poe rises up, changes the angle, and Finn props an arm under his head to meet him. Open mouth, wet lips, searching tongue; it doesn't matter how often he does this, there's always a thrill that flashes down his spine at the first taste. Poe groans for a second, hand cupping Finn's cheek, and his eyes flutter closed as Finn takes him as far as he can, then back up, then a little farther yet.

"Finn..." Poe mumbles, almost sleepily, like he's reaching for sense, trying to find the answer to something, and Finn pushes up closer, elbow corkscrewing into the cold, damp sand. Maybe it's his usual perfectionism, but he wants to do this right, better than ever before. He wants and needs, down at the level of brain-buzzing electricity and blood pumping fast, to make Poe feel more, and more, until his hips are rocking ragged, pushing hard, and Finn's throat is opening, a little dry and scraping and _perfect_.

Close to the end, he's dragging his tongue around the shaft while his lips stay fastened around the base; Poe's holding his head with both hands and crooning moans that occasionally resolve into Finn's name. When Poe comes, Finn swallows and swallows, groaning back, arm wrapped tight around Poe's hips, refusing to let him go.

"Buddy," Poe finally says, trying to ease Finn off. Unlatching takes some work; his mouth is half-full, sticky and salt-sour, and air whistles in his nose. "Bud."

"Poe, _Poe_ ," Finn says. He rests his head against Poe's knee and tries to breathe through his mouth. Poe strokes Finn's neck and shoulder softly. "Good?"

"Superb," Poe tells him, easing off to the side and doing up his pants. "You're never not going to blow my mind."

"Mindblowjob," Finn suggests, sitting up, abruptly feeling the cold down his back.

"Exactly, courtesy of you and only you." Poe hops to his feet and calls for BB-8. "How's dinner, little guy?"

"Simmering," BB-8 replies. "How's copulation?"

"Ugh," Finn says to that, rubbing his eyes hard, then brushing off the seat of his trousers. "Can you get my back?"

"I," Poe says, grin creeping across his face, "will always have your back, yes."

"Thanks," Finn says, and waits, but Poe's just looking at him, smiling. "I appreciate that. But I mean, could you get the sand off my back?"

"Yeah, of course, that, too," Poe says quickly, head bobbing rapidly. "Got it. I knew that."

"Smooth," Finn tells him. "So smooth."

"Thank you."

"Welcome."

Poe offers him his hand. "Shall we proceed to dine?"

Finn takes it. "After a most excellent appetizer, yes, thank you."

Poe bumps into him, hip, then shoulder, and squeezes his hand. "Me, I'm looking forward to dessert."

"Yeah?" At the camp, Finn checks the pot, while BB-8 tells him not to disturb it too much like some kind of clumsy human.

"Yeah," Poe tells him and stirs in the ground seeds to thicken the stew. He glances over, waiting as Finn tugs his still-damp jumper on, then adds, "you, by the way. The dessert is you."

Grinning, Finn shakes his head. "Got it, but thanks for the clarification."

Poe salutes him. "Any time. My pleasure. Or, even, _our_ pleasure, huh? And so on."

"And suchlike, yes." Finn ladles up a serving for Poe, then one for himself.

They eat sitting next to each other, BB-8 on Poe's other side, chuckling as he runs through his diagnostics. After a few bites, Finn slumps a little to lean on Poe. Savory and steaming, the jocón tastes like forest loam and sea air. The meat is tender and mild, the fruit rich.

At some point, Poe slips his arm around Finn and they shift a little so they're sitting closer yet. The unfamiliar stars are starting to prickle into view above the sea.

"Seconds?" Finn asks.

"Hell, yes," Poe replies, but neither moves for quite some time.


End file.
